I won’t pretend it all dies down completely and life gets easy, but something changes.

Or I change.

I can face the people who matter, look them in the eye and not feel shame. Shiluva and Jasmine, Ramano and his group, Masana, and a few others who’ve returned to being my friends.

But sometimes I lift my eyes and face the mockers too. It feels good, especially if some of them fall quiet, or slip away from the crowd.

I count it a victory the day Unandi and I happen to come out of a prelim exam together and she slants me her usual superior look and says, “That thing with your photo, Lamulile? Maybe in the end, it went a bit too far.”

Then she does this tossing thing with her head, so that her braids fly around and nearly hit me in the face, except that I jump back.

I hear someone laughing softly behind me. Shiluva.

“Not exactly an apology, but I’ll take it,” I say to her. “We’ll never be friends, but I’ve noticed Unandi is never part of the gate crowd these days.”

“She didn’t like what you said about empty little lives. So not how she sees herself.”

Ramano joins us, and our hands find each other as Shiluva turns back to wait for Jasmine.

I thought I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with a boy for years to come, after what it led to with Dambisa.

How wrong could I be? It was so easy to fall in love with Ramano. I know he’ll never ask me to do anything that makes me uncomfortable. I don’t even need him to promise me that, I just know without asking him.

“Everything okay?” he asks, smiling, and I smile back at him.

I went through something that nearly crushed me, but I’ve come out of it because of people like Ramano and Shiluva.

“More than okay,” I say, turning in towards him and waiting for his kiss.

***

Tell us: Can a man, or boy, be a feminist, and is Ramano an example of this?